Don Quixote
by dochar ar bith ann
Summary: The Trotsky. How Skip went from being that scared kid in detention to Leon Bronstein's right hand man.
1. That Kind of Guy

Summary: How Skip went from being that scared kid in detention to Leon Bronstein's right-hand man.

Yes, I just wrote a fic about one of the most ignored characters in one of the least well-known films out there. I realize what a hipster that makes me. But hey, give Jesse Camacho some love.

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Trotsky _or any of its characters. I'm just trying to change the world in my own tiny way.

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><p>"I am the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. And if you give Skip or any other student another unjustifiable detention you and I are going to have a <em>serious<em> problem, miss – ah – I'm sorry, what was your name?"

It hadn't ended prettily. Skip wasn't a bad kid. He'd never asked for any of this; he'd never asked to be noticed at all. Ms. Davis had only started on him in the first place because he was an easy target, the kind of sad-sack boy who never raised a fuss no matter what you threw at him because he was used to worse. After his old school, all he'd wanted from high school was to be left alone, and so far not even that was working.

Cue Leon Bronstein. As if a fiery-eyed psychopathic guardian angel who thought he was a dead Russian revolutionary was just what Skip's life had been missing. It had never occurred to him that having somebody stand up for him could actually make things worse. Now Ms. Davis was taking every possible opportunity to humiliate him – _Do try to keep the rest of your uniform clean, young man, didn't we have to have it ordered specially in your size? _- And Berkhov seemed to think he was in on Leon's game.

But it was hard not to admire him for having the balls to talk to Ms. Davis like that. To do what everyone there wanted to do, when fear kept them nodding and chewing their fingernails and saying _Yes, Ms. Davis, sorry Ms. Davis, it won't happen again_. Not just that, to do it with such calm and nonchalance that for a moment the bitch was dumbstruck, as if Leon really had in him a seed of Marxist grandeur that even she could see.

"Skip! Just the man I wanted to see." The next morning, before classes. Skip's face fell. He turned slowly from his locker, afraid of what would happen if he did, afraid of what Leon would do if he didn't.

Leon, all crooked smile and insane glinting eyes, held up two cups of coffee and extended one for Skip to take. "Apologies for all the brouhaha yesterday. I wish there was a way I could have done it without you getting sent to Berkhov, though you handled that like a champion."

"…Thanks?" Skip took the coffee and stared at him like it might bite. He didn't normally drink coffee.

"And I do intend to keep my word, so if the fascists give you any trouble…"

He wanted to glare and tell Leon how much worse she'd gotten. It was all Leon's fault anyway. But he couldn't. "Um. Okay."

Leon put a hand on Skip's shoulder. "Thank you for telling Berkhov you didn't know me, by the way; that did everything for my credibility."

"Well, it's… true..." He bit his lip. "Do you really think you're Trotsky? Or was that just something you said to freak Davis out?" He couldn't help a small smile at the memory of the look on her face. "Because either way, it worked."

Leon looked delighted. His smile became conspiratorial. "Skip, there is never any reason to lie to authority. Speak truthfully and in a clear voice, knowing yourself to be morally beyond question, for no punishment can tarnish a just principle."

"Who said that?"

"Me." He giggled. "The second Trotsky, that is, not the first. Yes, I do believe it. I'm sure of it." And he sounded so certain that Skip almost believed it too.

"Listen, I know you have to get to class now, but I'd love it if you'd join us at the Student Union meeting after school. You're just the kind of guy we need."

"Ah…" He should have said no. He knew that. It couldn't be too hard to make up some excuse. But – something about it rang true, in a way that appealed to him. He'd spent years just taking all the shit that people heaped on him and suddenly that did not feel _fair_ – he ought to be able to look Ms. Davis in the eye and tell her it wasn't. Leon clearly thought he could. The guy was ape-shit crazy insane, but when he looked at Skip he obviously didn't see a shy, friendless fat kid who was scared of everything that moved. "Um, alright."

And that was how it started. Leon Bronstein, it turned out, was like a new-formed sun, dragging everyone into the furnace of his ideology. Even guys like Dwight, who had always been able to make his life hell with a few words, turned into sputtering idiots with a raised eyebrow from Leon. Skip was finding it harder to be scared any more.

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><p>More to come soon enough.<p> 


	2. La Mancha, Montreal West

Summary: How Skip went from being that scared kid in detention to Leon Bronstein's right-hand man.

Chapter two has arrived!

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Trotsky _or any of its characters. I'm just trying to change the world in my own tiny way.

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><p>"So. Social Justice." Caroline hopped up onto the desk, twirling her cigarette. "How does that work? As, like, a dance theme, not as a concept."<p>

"We could have costumes," offered Tony.

"As, like, Mother Theresa and shit?"

"Oh, but social justice is a much broader concept than simply charity work," said Leon. "It's political activism, it's raising awareness, it's defending the weak. Battling against the status quo in any sphere."

"Like Dr. Horrible. _The status is not quo_." Caroline snorted with laughter. "Okay, that's cool. So we can tell people like great revolutionaries and humanitarian icons and anybody who's made a difference."

Skip was surprised by her intelligence. He felt like he had to add something. "We could donate the proceeds to the Rwandan genocide recovery efforts," he offered. Leon gave him a grateful smile.

"This is retarded."

"Shut up, Dwight. That's a great idea." Tony looked up at them all and smiled as if he could hardly believe it. "This could actually be cool. Like, really cool."

"But the most important thing is that we get people thinking," said Leon, who stood by the door with one hand stiff behind his back, head bent in thought, the picture of severity. "Nobody gets in unless they have a costume that's actually relevant and effortful."

"What're you going as?"

"I'd like to give it some more thought before I decided on anything."

"Oh, gosh, suspense." Caroline stifled a cough. "How about you, Skip?"

The question caught him off-guard, and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Don Quixote?"

Leon's eyebrows shot up. "I take my hat off to you, sir."

"Wait, who the fuck is Don Quixote?"

Skip looked down at his shoes, up at Leon. _Why is it always ME you question, Dwight?_

Leon stepped in. "Dwight, Don Quixote resurrected the old chivalric ideal of the knight errant in order to protect the weak and fight injustice in contemporary Spain. He was mocked for it, but… he remained strong."

And he looked so moved that Skip didn't dare ask him whether he had actually read the book. Leon, whom Skip had seen devouring _My Life_ the way the grade nine girls devoured _Twilight_, could not have missed the point so completely if he'd tried. But Skip kept his mouth shut, wondering who had ever dared to mock Leon Bronstein.

"O-kayy," muttered Dwight, rolling his eyes.

"I think I'd make a decent Malcolm X," said Tony, and Caroline threw a book at him.

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><p>If Leon did read <em>Don Quixote<em> he probably used antiphrasis and decided it was about him. And skimmed over the ending.


	3. The Kitchen Knight

Summary: How Skip went from being that scared kid in detention to Leon Bronstein's right-hand man.

More.

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Trotsky _or any of its characters. I'm just trying to change the world in my own tiny way.

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><p>Making the costume turned out to be the easy part. He found the breastplate in a Henry VIII costume, which was depressing enough that he tried not to think about it. The rest was scrounged from his mother's kitchen. Sure, the epaulettes and helmet were very clearly pasta strainers, but he'd never intended it to look perfect.<p>

"Let me guess, you're going as a roast pan full of ham," his older brother had said, sticking his head out his bedroom door as Skip clanked out the front door on his way to open up the ticket booth.

Skip rolled his eyes. "You're an ass, Josh." Hadn't _anybody _around here read the book?

When Skip arrived, the armor already hot and uncomfortable, he found Caroline and Tony hanging up decorations while Dwight griped. None of them had changed into their costumes yet, and Leon was nowhere to be seen. Caroline tossed a roll of tickets at him. "Skip! Ya look hot."

Somehow he managed to catch it in midair. "Oh, yeah, the helmet was a mistake - " Wait, what?

"Leon says he wants you to start selling tickets ASAP."

Skip blinked. Just Caroline being Caroline. She was one of those pretty girls who seemed to get a kick out of flirting shamelessly with the losers. Skip still hadn't figured out whether she was being cruel or kind. "Where is Leon, anyway?"

"Practising his unionization speech," said Tony, who was taping up a monochrome portrait of Lenin that was taller than he was. "Car, are you still down to do my eyeliner?"

"I'm going to go sell tickets and not ask."

"Wise man."

Skip stood at the ticket booth in the boiling sun for a good ten minutes of nothing. Nobody was going to come, for the simple, clear reason that Leon was crazy. And if they did come, they would be in jeans and hoodies like normal human beings and it would be, 'Hey, why's the fat kid wearing a suit of armor?' and he would never hear the end of it. The heat and the sun were killing him. And God, worst of all, Dwight had been _right_. This was stupid. Leon was crazy and Skip was an idiot for getting swept up in it. His only consolation, he thought, tugging at the neck strap of the ridiculous helmet, was that if he was working tickets and concessions all night he wouldn't have to actually try to dance.

And then the mob arrived.

It took Skip a good twenty seconds to close his mouth, and another twenty to pick up the tickets – which had dropped from his lifeless fingers – so he could actually start selling them. Holy shit. This wasn't Montreal West High School; these weren't even kids. It was a mob of lunatics with that special you-better-fucking-believe-it brand of Leon Bronstein craziness. There, Malcolm X – at least two Gandhis – the Buddha – the Black Panthers – Was that René Levesque? He could barely think straight enough to count their change.

Eventually Caroline came out and saved him, almost unrecognizable in a bleach-blonde wig and sparkly silver dress. When he got back inside he found Leon collecting signatures, and for a moment he was amazed that he looked the same as ever. He had expected Leon to take his costume to the same extremes he took the rest of his life – and then it clicked. Leon didn't _need _a costume. He was the real thing. Skip couldn't conceal a smile.

"Leon? Yeah, uh, a girl dressed as Ayn Rand just told me that you threw her out."

Eye-rolls all around. _Dwight_, _you already ruin everything without defending Ayn Rand_. For a moment Leon was speechless. "And?"

"_Why?_"

"This is a fascist-free zone, Dwight. Maybe you should leave as well."

"Throw another fuckin' kid out, Leon… and you are next." Dwight made a cross with his fingers. Skip wondered if he had any clue why he was doing it.

Tony was playing peacekeeper for the day. "Easy, Dwight, okay? Ayn stuck back in, she's in the gym."

Skip decided he'd had enough of Dwight shitting all over Leon. This whole thing was Leon's idea, and Dwight hadn't done more for it than selling a few packs of snickers. "Yeah, Dwight, go back to the candy stand."

"What'd you say? _Skippy_? You wanna fuckin' DIE?"

Skip ducked warily behind the length of his tin foil lance. Dwight was almost certainly full of shit, but he really didn't want to risk it.

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><p>Oh, Dwight. His douchebaggery is so <em>unrepentant. <em>It's almost Dickensian.


	4. Cynics

Summary: How Skip went from being that scared kid in detention to Leon Bronstein's right-hand man.

Time for awkwardness!

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Trotsky _or any of its characters. I'm just trying to change the world in my own tiny way.

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><p>"Skip, this is my sister Sarah."<p>

Leon Bronstein was _insane_.

"She doesn't know anybody here, so why don't you ask her to dance and talk to her and stuff?"

Skip had been painfully aware of the girl ever since she'd walked in; the culturally loaded costume, the unfamiliarity of her face, her intelligent bearing. Leon's sister. Leon's _hot _sister. And Leon had just more or less ordered _him_ to dance with her. Skip gave Leon a surreptitious are-you-fucking-kidding-me look, but the intent expression in his eyes did not waver. And Skip was powerless. Before he knew it the words were already hanging awkwardly in the air between them.

"Do you… want to dance?"

Sarah hesitated. He'd expected that. What was Leon trying to pull – was this some strategic piece of manipulation, or an ill-advised attempt to be helpful, or had his tiff with Dwight left him in a bad enough mood that he just wanted to see Skip humiliated? But then Sarah nodded, as if she couldn't say no to Leon any more than Skip could.

He got her a drink, and she smiled. Despite all good sense a tiny particle of hope lodged itself in his throat. Right up until they got into the heart of the dancing and reality hit him like a brick. Every stiff, helpless attempt to move to the beat only reminded him how fucking _fat_ he was – he didn't belong here. Least of all with Leon's sister.

Sarah didn't look a whole lot happier than he felt, glancing uneasily between him and the rest of the pulsating crowd as if she didn't know what she was supposed to be doing. He felt terrible for her. He knew better than most what it felt like to get shoved into something you hated, just because you were too nice to say no.

Then Caroline showed up to flirt drunkenly with him as if it were her mission in life to make Skip uncomfortable, taking the opportunity to terrify Sarah on the side. Normally he sort of liked Caroline, but right now he wanted to murder her. Couldn't she see he was in enough trouble without her 'help'?

When she finally left them alone, he gave Sarah an apologetic look, forgetting for a moment to keep his feet moving – that required constant concentration. "Sorry about her, she's crazy," he yelled, over the pounding bassline.

Sarah's lips thinned, and then she glanced over at him. She had stopped dancing too. He felt her eyes on him and half-heartedly started to move again.

"You… don't really like dancing, do you," said Sarah, with a crooked smile.

"Hate it," admitted Skip. It felt like taking a weight from his shoulders.

She gestured to the auditorium door. "Want to get out of here?"

"Well – I mean if you want to stay, I -"

"No, please, this kinda freaks me out."

He followed her mutely into the hallway – mercifully empty. Outside the auditorium, away from the crushing music, he finally felt like he could breathe again.

Sarah leaned against the wall, putting a hand to her head. "Is that what all public school dances are like?"

"Pretty much. Apart from the costumes." Skip tugged at the strap of his makeshift helmet. A band of sweat had formed underneath it. "You go to a private school?"

"Yes. So did Leon, but I don't think it really fit in with his ideology. Why would somebody _spike the punch_?"

"I am so sorry."

"It isn't your fault." She said it with a sad smile, and Skip knew she wasn't just talking about the punch. This was her way of letting him down gently. _Why don't you ask her to dance and talk to her and stuff? _Yeah, right, Leon.

"Don Quixote, eh?"

He looked over at Sarah in surprise. "Y-you're the first person to have gotten it."

"That's why I picked something obvious. The pasta strainers are a clever touch, though."

"You've read the book," said Skip.

She nodded. Again the crooked smile that wasn't entirely happy. "A long time ago. My dad read it to me."

"But… not to Leon."

"Leon and my dad don't see eye to eye."

Even if skip hadn't known about the factory and Leon's hunger strike, that wouldn't have surprised him. Of course Leon wouldn't get along with his dad – but Sarah was harder to figure out. Fondness for her father, but enough loyalty to Leon that she'd even been willing to dance with Skip. Torn between two worlds, maybe, like all sane human beings were.

"Let me guess, he totally misunderstood the point of the costume?"

Skip flicked a hand over his head. "Whoosh. Windmills." Then chuckled anxiously, hoping she knew what he meant.

But to his relief she giggled. "Oh. _Oh_. You, Skip, have a nasty streak."

"I- sorry?"

"Windmills. My brother. Oh, that is _priceless_."

Skip flushed. He had assumed his little joke – an obscure, cerebral one, the kind he never made out loud anymore because people looked at him funny – would have been beneath everyone's notice, if not too strange for anyone else to hit upon it in the first place. Just something he'd been thinking about, not long after meeting Leon Bronstein. Reinventing himself as Trotsky, trying to recapture a golden-age ideology, searching for villains and princesses to play-act in his fantasy… This communism business was really another kind of chivalry, wasn't it, with Leon as its puppy-dog-eyed Don Quixote? Ridiculous, and yet strangely compelling. "Well, uh, it… occurred to me. I. I didn't mean it cruelly or anything-"

Sarah held up her hands. "Hey, I think it's genius! I mean, Leon – he's my brother, and even more than that, I think he's _right_, I believe in him – but every so often I still take a look at him and think _What the hell_?"

"I knew you were sane," blurted Skip, with an idiot's grin.

"But you're here, helping him. Leon doesn't recruit cynics."

He wanted to answer her, even though he didn't know what to say – _was_ he a cynic, really? Did it count if nobody would ever _know_ you were a cynic, if you chose an ironic costume that you _knew_ everyone would take at face value and threw yourself wholeheartedly into something you'd been bullied into in the first place? – But at that moment the Atrium door opened and Tony burst in. He looked like he didn't know whether to wring his hands of giggle.

"Skip, Sarah? Um, development."

"What's going on?" asked Sarah, instantly alert.

"Leon wants a strike."

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><p>Sorry this took so long. You know that bit when you get stuck at one sentence because you just can't make it sound right? Yeah. That and calculus.<p> 


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